


Rest, Sad Eyes (Discontinued Version)

by pennysgrace



Series: an ever-fixed mark [1]
Category: Sense and Sensibility (1995), Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Emotions, F/M, Grief, Happy Ending, Love, Marriage, Mourning, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, inner monologue, introspective, mostly canon, unrequited love turning into requited love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28303491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennysgrace/pseuds/pennysgrace
Summary: Weep you no more sad fountains,What need you flow so fast?
Relationships: Colonel Brandon/Marianne Dashwood
Series: an ever-fixed mark [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2078343
Comments: 26
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody!
> 
> Colonel Brandon and Marianne have been one of my favorite pairings from literature ever since my mom first exposed me to Jane Austen by forcing me to watch the 1995 edition of Sense and Sensibility. Alan Rickman's Brandon is THE Brandon in my mind, and while I've read the book, this story will be a mix of the book and the '95 movie, and with Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet in mind. The last few pages of the book leave much to the imagination about Brandon and Marianne's relationship, and I've always been intrigued by the line "Marianne found her own happiness in forming his." This story is an exploration of that, as well as of the healing process someone would go through after suffering an emotional and physical trauma like Marianne did.
> 
> A while ago I posted Rest, Sad Eyes under the pen name ElspethRoe. I've since deleted that account, but I thought I'd do a rewrite since it was one of my favorite things I've ever written. This story is definitely not identical to that one. Lots of things have changed, but it is a loose rewrite with many of the same themes and some of the same rough scenes. I hope you'll enjoy it.
> 
> For my Vicbourne readers, Chapter 3 of Libretto is in progress, but it's slow going. This story just sort of happened and I figured I'd write it to see if I can't get my Libretto plot moving again by writing something else for a bit. Chapter 3 is definitely still in the works, but please be patient with me. It's being difficult.
> 
> Anyway, I very much hope you all enjoy my story. If you do, please leave a comment. They really are a huge encouragement to keep writing.
> 
> -Penny

A bride stands alone on her wedding night.

The room seems enormous after the cottage, all high ceilings and rich carpetings, lined with muted wallpaper and a whole host of bookshelves filled to their brims. Shadows made by the burning fire in the grate dance along the walls, and she glances briefly around the room to see if she can pick out her own, but then abandons the pursuit as a silly whim.

The mirror before her is, after all, unsettling enough.

She has never seen someone look so very pale, she thinks as she stares fixedly at her own reflection, clothed in the simplest nightdress she owns and looking smaller than she remembers feeling since she was a child. It is almost morbid, her fascination at the weariness, and exhaustion, and discomfort that gazes unswervingly back at her out of her own eyes. Her face _is_ a little drawn, as ever, but she is almost bewildered to see that nowhere in her expression does the utter dread that has settled in the pit of her stomach and at the base of her spine show itself.

Compared to the unending storm that carries on within her, the girl in the mirror looks almost serene.

_If only._

Idly, she casts once more about the room, wondering if the slow ticking she hears is coming from a clock that is hidden somewhere beyond her view, or if her mind is simply counting the moments as they slip so rapidly by. The waiting is making her wretched, and it would be so like her own mind to torture her so. To fix her thoughts irrevocably on what is to come.

The waiting is unbearable, but the _end_ of the waiting will be so much worse.

~

_The real difficulty is not in the bustle of London, nor is it in her sickbed at Cleveland. The real difficulty is in returning to Barton and finding that living any sort of life that might fit comfortably inside the tragic little cottage that used to house an altogether different Marianne is an impossibility now, and ever will be._

_She is scarcely able to walk from the carriage to the front door without finding herself sorely short of breath and trembling like a newborn foal the day she and Elinor arrive home at last. There are new rules made. She is not to venture from the house for fear of her own weakness, or of any lingering chill that might be in the air. She is not allowed to read, but must have everything read out to her. The exertion on her eyes so soon after the fever, they tell her, would not be wise. She is blanketed and cosseted constantly, waited on hand and foot by both mother and sister who, after seeing her so near death, lavish every loving care imaginable upon her. No sooner does she lick her own dry lips than a steaming cup of tea is provided for her. She has only to shift in her seat, and thickly woven woolen things are piled on her, tucked tightly around her so that no draft can disturb her rest._

_She has never hated anything so fervently. Despises it, in fact, because in the silence that surrounds her like the mist that rises from the river to enfold the little cottage each morning, she is left alone with her mind, which persecutes her now with all the brutality of an inquisition. She cannot bear her family’s company, and she cannot bear to be left alone._

_She tries to make herself useful wherever they will allow. She shells sweet green peas for Betsy and attempts to teach Margaret French. She tries her hand at simple, refined things like embroidery and knitting, but she has been a terror with a needle since girlhood and age has not improved her talents there. Still, she persists, because busy hands are hands that do not have time to remember things like passionately illicit kisses laid to the skin that stretches over their fine bones, and when she is idle the memories catch her far too quickly._

_The worst of all is when night comes. Elinor has left her all alone and begun sharing a room with Margaret, all the better to allow Marianne to rest, she says. Marianne does not like this arrangement, because what her mother and sisters do not know is that the moment the moon situates itself in the night sky and the bedchamber door closes with a soft thud behind her, the darkness seems to teem with voices and scenes from months long gone by, and there is nowhere left to run. She can only tremble beneath the covers on a bed that has always been too narrow, and hope desperately that her mama and sisters cannot hear her tears through the walls._

_What would they think of her now, weeping after everything? She never wants to find out, and she battles against sleep like it is a demon coming to snatch her away, because the only thing worse than the memories is her fear of her own dreams._

_She can feel herself becoming stagnate. Can feel her muscles tremble like leaves caught in a strong wind at only the slightest exertion_ — _silly things like climbing the stairs, which she can no longer do without Elinor’s arms keeping her balance for her. Her mind is both weary and restless. Elinor reads to her from every sensible book they possess, but all too soon there are no more histories, or biographies, or even novels. Elinor only attempts to read poetry to her once, and Marianne_ — _she shivers as though she’s been caught in the snow. She cannot bear it; has snatched the book from poor Elinor’s hands before she even realizes she has risen from her seat, and her pulse is thundering against her neck hard enough to bruise, it seems._

_After that they never try it again. She would rather live out the rest of her life without so much as ever touching the binding of a book again than let poetry wash over her once more._

_The days seem to stretch on and on without end or escape, and with each one that passes, though her lungs become stronger and her face less pale, she feels increasingly as though suffocation is not far._

_She wonders if, after all that has happened, madness will come for her after all, and then thinks privately and very briefly before she can stop herself, that perhaps it would be better that way._

_At least she would finally be able to forget._

_~_

She has never heard such a soft sound pierce a silence so definitely, she thinks as the door behind her opens, then closes, and though she has been expecting it for nearly half an hour, it sends her pulse racing.

_She cannot bear to turn around._

So she does not. She finds a patch of wallpaper to stare at and hears, after a good long pause, the sound of quiet footfalls making their way across the room behind her. _From the door to the fireplace,_ she thinks, and hears the steps cease as she watches the shadow he casts stretch almost to the tips of her toes.

 _Breathe,_ she thinks, remembering standing in her room at the cottage hours ago, Elinor behind her, lacing her stays tight and whispering half-listened-to nonsense about friends and guests. The skies had been clear all day, showing not even the slightest inclination toward rain.

Perhaps—perhaps she has not truly tasted air in all the time since then; since morning dawned and Elinor laced her up so tightly. That would account for the dizziness and the faint pounding in her head, at least.

Now she hears him speak very softly, hears his weight shift against the floor and his words, _“Good evening, wife.”_ She has never truly been afraid, she realizes, in all her life until now. She is terrified of what she will find when she turns around. 

_It could be hunger,_ she thinks wildly as she braces herself. _Oh, let it be hunger and nothing more,_ but she knows better _._

It is more likely love, or something to that effect. Affection, surely, invariably, almost, if she knows him at all.

The trouble is, she _does_ know him, even if she does not understand him and has resigned herself to the knowledge that she most likely never will. She has tried and failed countless times already, and will continue to do so to what she can only assume will be no avail. She has, regardless, come to know him and is all too certain, even before she turns to face him, of exactly what she will find.

_Dreadful, horrible, unrelenting kindness, always and without reprieve, and the instant she meets his eyes she feels a nearly irresistible urge to flee._

_~_

_Repentance, it seems, is a lonely business._

_It rains for days on end, until it feels as though her head will burst with it. The sound—she thinks she must have found it lovely once, but now it only echoes in her head and leaves her fighting to cling to her sanity with the very tips of her fingers._

_It leaves her wretched, unable to remember things stolen by vicious fever, yet equally unable to forget._

_They tiptoe around her. She watches them at it, watches them as they watch her. They tuck her in on the settee and shoo Margaret away, but she can still hear them, Elinor and Mama in the next room, and she can most certainly make out the sound of her own name. Perhaps she is too pale for their liking, or perhaps her eyes are too bright, but she can hear their worry and finds it more stifling even than solitude, so the next day when the sun rises she begs to be left in her room to rest her head._

_The view from the window is dismal, indeed, but at least she is out of their way. She has a snarl of thread and fingers reddened from being pricked too many times to see to, and Elinor...has already done so much. She needn’t nurse her constantly too. She can make herself unobtrusive, she thinks, in the time that is to come. She can and will mend her ways._

_She will be quiet, and useful, and better._

_The first day is terrible._

_The second is unendingly dull._

_The third is heavy-laden with memories she would pay nearly any price to forget._

_The fourth has her lost in thought and wishing desperately for something—anything—to take every thought in her head from her and leave her in ignorant and uncaring bliss. Anything to take the constant ache away._

_The fifth—_

_Sees Elinor knocking at her door._

_The hinges creak a little as she opens it and peers beyond the confines of her own room to see her sister’s clasped hands and hesitant face._

_“Colonel Brandon is here to see you. I can send him away if you like. If you are not—not well.”_

_And suddenly all she can hear is the rain, even though she knows that if she turned toward her window she would see the first clear sky over Devonshire in nearly a week. Her mind is all rain, and steady, swaying footsteps, and utter agony._

_She never wants to see him again, so long as she lives, but she can hardly refuse him, of all people._

_“Don’t send him away. Just help me pin up my hair, it’s a terrible mess today.”_

_~_

She goes to the fire because he tells her to. Because he says “You’re shivering,” as he gazes at her with a soft, concerned frown. “Come, sit where it’s warm.”

There are two chairs by the fire, and she takes the one that does not have a book resting on the table beside it. He takes the other, dressed in a nightshirt and looking every bit as unobtrusive and horribly kind as she dreaded he would. The heat from the grate is lovely, though, and she does appreciate it after standing so long before the mirror, scarcely moving for her own nervousness.

She gazes into the flames and feels his eyes on her. When she can bear it no longer, she finally looks up and finds him riveted to her hands. They are clasped she realizes belatedly; clasped and fidgeting, the right grasping at the left, worrying at the bit of flesh at the base of her thumb, and she blushes under his gaze _—nervous—_ and lays both hands flat in her lap.

“Are you _—_ ” he asks just as she says “I did not _—_ ” and they both stop, interrupting each other, and as though the flush she already wears is not enough, before she can work up the courage to speak again, she is overtaken by a jaw-cracking yawn.

She can feel the heat all the way to the roots of her hair. Can feel it creeping down her neck and onto her chest, and thinks she must be going red all over. _Oh, to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. She has not had the time or the nerves to feel her own exhaustion today, but it has been her constant shadow and has at last caught up to her now that he is here to witness it._

But he just smiles.

“Are you tired?” he asks, and she thinks that was probably what he meant to say all along.

“Apparently rather more than I thought,” is her only answer, because she can hardly deny it now that her body has given him proof entirely without her permission.

“Bed then,” he tells her and rises to stride toward it _—_ the enormous, four-posted bed that takes up much of the end of the room _—_ and she is off-balance, flailing, because she has not readied herself, has not braced herself yet, and this is worse _—so much worse—_ than she imagined it would be. The worry is positively gnawing at her, and she cannot seem to send it away.

_She is entirely too terrified to let him touch her._

_~_

_He stands before her in a drawing room that is hardly that—it is too small to be a drawing room, really, but they make do—and for perhaps the first time in her entire life, she cannot think of anything at all to say._

_He smiles at her._

_She almost turns and leaves him there and then to sit all by himself on the settee that has been her prison these many weeks, because that small curve of his lips reminds her all at once of everything she is trying so hard to forget._

_She does not though. After everything it would be unforgivably rude, and there is no one in the world more deserving of her courtesy than Colonel Brandon._

_No one at all._

_Instead she talks about the weather. Complains, really, and casts her eyes on anything and everything that is not Colonel Brandon sitting opposite her, closer than he has been since—_

_Well, since._

_He asks—of course he does, who has not?—after her recovery, and she wonders if her smile looks as affected as it feels as she prattles out silly nonsense about teaching Margaret French and reading every book their tiny cottage can hold._

_And then he is speaking, and though she hears the first bit of it—something about Delaford when the weather is fine—she quickly loses all focus she might have applied to his words when her straying eyes land on the corner of a book that is poking out from beneath his seat, very nearly touching his boot, previously unnoticed, it seems, by any of the cottage’s inhabitants._

_It is no rare thing, to see books and sewing strewn every which way about the cottage. They are four women, after all, but she knows that book. Knows its binding like the back of her own hand—remembers who gave it to her as clearly as one remembers their worst nightmare—and she thinks very suddenly that she might just be ill, right there in front of him._

_Can he see, she wonders, the shame that pours into her? Can he see, and does he know? Does he know that a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets lies directly beneath him, and that the man who gifted it to her is the most deplorable of men and once sat where he is sitting now?_

_That she once smiled for him with all of her foolish heart?_

_He must see something of it in her, she thinks, because his visit is brief and though he is courtesy itself, he requires no farewells from her as he takes his leave._

_She sits very still, horrified at everything that has just passed, self-censure and relief mingling within her that after such a woeful attempt at politeness from her, he will surely never venture their way again._

_Then she calls Margaret._

_She snatches the book up from the floor and deposits in her sister’s arms as quickly as though afraid it might burn her._

_She tells Margaret that they will have no French lesson today. Tells her to go instead to play in the stream and to make the horrid book into those paper ships she so loves._

_Maybe she will finally be able to forget about it once it has sailed away._

_~_

She is chastising herself before she even reaches the bedside.

She can see it in his face, in his every movement and in his eyes as he turns back the blankets on the bed and waits for her.

_He means to let her sleep. Of course he does, and she has spent the better part of an hour being nervous of him and his touch as though she knows nothing of him at all._

He is gentle, always. Unbearably so, and his easy care for her, his willingness to put his new wife to bed untouched and with no expectations other than that she should get a good night’s rest, shames her utterly.

He is too good, and as much as her stomach practically _writhes_ with it, she does not deserve to stand here, facing him beside their marriage bed and struggling to meet his eyes, at all.

He holds out the covers for her and she climbs in, shuffling herself onto the proper pillow. When he slides in after her, her feet accidentally brush against his calf, and the warmth of it startles her as she realizes for the first time just how cold her feet are.

_Oh._

She jerks away without thinking, _mortified,_ because how many times has Elinor told her to warm her feet before bed? 

Too many.

He stills as she draws her feet, and by extension her whole body, as far and as quickly to the other side of the bed as she can, and as he looks first curiously, then knowingly at her, she realizes what she has done and thinks that she has never felt so wretched.

If she could start it all over _—this horrible, unending night—_ she would change so very many things, but at the moment her trembling, awkward perch on the very furthest point of the bed from him is what she would wish to change most, if only she knew how.

It seems so very cruel, after everything, to run away from him now, even if it is for the sake of cold feet.

But he just settles himself quietly and says nothing about it. She forces every tensed muscle in her back to relax and slowly shifts herself to the place she should be, occupying the pillow beside him, and he leans to his bedside table and blows the candle out, leaving only the light of the fire to glow faintly on them.

They lay there, side by side, and she can hear his quiet breaths, can feel his weight shift slightly beside her, and it petrifies her to be so close, even in the dark.

She just wants it to be over, the long, stretching day, but she already knows she will never be able to sleep.

Then he is turning, truly shifting and rolling onto his side toward her, and her breath is skittering to a halt in her lungs, frozen.

She can only stare at his outline above her and dread it when he begins to lean down over her.

_No._

_No._

_No._

_Please._

She would plead for mercy if she could, but she cannot move, and so he leans down and very softly kisses her brow, as no one has done since she was very little and her mother was putting her to bed.

Even her thoughts are gasping as she chants desperately to herself.

_Do not cry._

_Do not cry._

She cannot bear the thought of him feeling the tears fall to her cheeks.

He lingers. She can smell him above her, something like the scent of pine clinging to him, clean and fresh. She feels his breath gust against her hairline, feels his lips brush against her skin as he whispers _“Goodnight, Marianne,”_ and for the first time of the night, she feels truly bare, lacking the comfort of a dress and left only in a thin layer of linen. She wants nothing more than to cringe away from him, from his too-gentle, too-tender kiss that leaves her unable to do anything but tremble. 

He is so very warm, so very soft and steady, and he makes her feel so very, very ugly in his wake. So desperately unworthy.

Finally he returns to his pillow and she allows herself to breathe once more.

What she does not allow herself to do, is to make any sound at all as the tears finally come. As she rolls away from him and buries her face in her pillow.

He has never called her simply _Marianne_ before. Not once. The sound of it is still echoing in her ears, so intimate that it has left her raw.

 _Marianne._ And a kiss laid to her brow to say goodnight.

She could live a thousand lifetimes and more, she thinks, and never in even one of them would she be worthy of him.

~

_It rains again, and then the sun shines._

_The days do not grow any shorter, nor do the bounds of the cottage grow any looser, and she resigns herself to making very uneven stitches in poor Betsy’s mending for the foreseeable future._

_Resigns herself to being alone with the memories, and thinks that it is certainly a fitting punishment. Everybody watched and warned her, but she would not be told. Now she can remember and agonize just like the rest of them, too late to do anything about it at all, left only with regrets._

_Three days after Margaret returns to the cottage happy and with the desecrated remains of a book in her arms, Marianne at first thinks she is imagining the voices she hears downstairs, from her place by the window in her room. Perhaps it is the loneliness that has brought her to the point of hearing, even, what she would rather forget._

_Until Elinor knocks, once again, at her door._

_“Marianne, it is the Colonel—”_

_She is rising before Elinor can so much as finish speaking. Is pinning her hair into some semblance of presentability and feeling her stomach cramp with something she hesitates to call nervousness and instead considers rather more akin to displeasure._

_What on earth can he be thinking of, coming back here? She was abominably rude to him before; has been, in fact, for months and months on end. What must he think of her, now, after everything? The very thought of it makes her ill, because there are people in the world who are like Elinor, people who are good, and gentle, and honorable. People who go about fetching the other kind of people—the foolish, selfish, arrogant kind—when they are lost in the rain out of nothing more than the kindness of their hearts._

_And she is not one of them._

_He most certainly is, and she cannot bear his kindness now; cannot bear the thought of his pity. Of his persistent magnanimity in overlooking the many, many ways she has abused him beyond what any neighbor should another._

_But she goes down to see him anyway, to sit in the drawing room that is hardly a drawing room, because it is not as though she can sleight him again, after all._

_He is there, waiting for her, but he does not sit down when she does. He has not even given Thomas his hat._

_“Miss Marianne, I will not trouble you long, only I was passing by and thought your sister might like this.”_

_And he offers her a book._

_In French._

_“For your sister’s lessons,” he tells her, and she is staring at it—at him—at the both of them—and frowning._

_“Colonel, you really should not. Margaret is dreadful at keeping things fine. The pages will be ripped out—”_

_“Think nothing of it. At least it will have been well-used.” And he smiles, bows, and takes his leave._

_How long she stands there, perplexed in his wake, she cannot be certain. Eventually she opens the cover, turns to the first page, and feels...dreadful shame. Worse, perhaps, than she has ever felt before._

_Margaret will never be able to read a book like the one he has just given her. She can barely conjugate her verbs, yet in Marianne’s hands is an elegantly bound novel. What is more, the Colonel knows Margaret well. Calls her Captain, even, and surely knows very well that she has no more skill with French than Marianne has with speaking Chinese, as people from the Orient do._

_But what had she said before? That she was teaching Margaret, and that the weather was dreadful, raining and keeping everybody cooped up inside, and that Elinor had read to her every book in the house._

_So he brought her a new one and tricked her into taking it. For Margaret._

_Because he is kind. The sort of person who goes after wayward girls in the rain and forgives them for being rude, utter fools, and it seems she will never be allowed to stop owing Colonel Brandon._

_She takes the book upstairs and tucks it into the drawer of her bedside table, vowing that she will never read it._

_She cannot bear that gentle way of his. It hurts more than fists, more than the soreness of a bruise, and that book...it might just break her, if she lets it. The thoughtfulness behind it certainly will._

_Every time he looks at her, so willing before anyone else, even Elinor, to forgive her for all, she can only feel as though she is once more lost and dying in the rain._

_She thinks, oddly, that she could bear him better when she thought him everything mediocre and unworthy than she can now, when she thinks him anything but._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> Well, apparently my muse is in full force because Chapter 2 happened in one day. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that my fics are always subject to editing, especially the first few chapters, as I find it takes me a little while to really get to know my characters and their voices. If you really like the fic a certain way, you might want to make a copy of it. Otherwise, just know that some things might change as we go ahead. I'll try to mention if I've done any major editing so that you can go back and reread if you'd like.
> 
> If you like what you read, please let me know. I love to hear your feedback, and constructive criticism is always a good thing so long as it's kind.
> 
> Love,
> 
> -Penny

Many moments of warmth and comfort pass before she realizes that she has long been asleep and is now awake, and that the sun is shining on her from the wrong side of the room.

Dazzling. The sunlight is dazzling as she startles, her eyes opening wide, sitting up so quickly that it takes her long moments to right herself. Long moments of looking uncomprehendingly around the room she finds herself in before realizing that she is not, in fact, in her dreary little room at Barton Cottage, but is instead situated in Colonel Brandon’s room at Delaford.

Long moments to realize that she became a married woman yesterday in the little church in the village, that her husband has gone from the room and left her alone in his bed, much to her shameful relief, and that by the position of the sun in the sky, her first day as a wife is nearly half gone.

Her neck is sore. She feels the muscles there complaining as she rises from her bed and thinks it must be from sleeping in a bed she is so unused to.

That, she supposes, will simply have to change. There is no help for it now.

A maid. There is a maid to call, and she has not had a maid to help her dress in years. Not since leaving Norland. It has always been Elinor or, later, Margaret, but now she finds herself in a house larger even than the Norland of her childhood, and with no sisters near enough to call out for.

She dresses, nonetheless, and hesitates only for a fraction of a moment with her hand on the door before opening it and bracing herself to face whatever she finds downstairs.

~

_She thinks of precious little but the book hidden away as though a shameful secret in the days that follow the Colonel’s visit._

_She attempts to distract herself._

_She nearly drives poor Elinor mad, following her about and trying to learn how to keep the accounts. It is, perhaps, an ill-advised combination, because she has never possessed a head for numbers and Elinor is too distracted by constantly examining her for color in her cheeks and hoarseness in her voice to accomplish anything._

_It does not last long at all, and no further attempts are made. On the contrary, though the sun shines after days and days of rain, she finds herself more alone than ever, taking refuge from the dreadful worrying they follow her with, Mama and Elinor, whenever she ventures downstairs._

_And she is so terribly, terribly bored. Weary with their worrying. The way they fuss over her, always feeling her brow for fever and examining her complexion for either too much color or not enough...it is exhausting. The stairwell leading down to their company is rapidly becoming the boundary line to her cage, and loneliness she may deserve, but the idleness and oppressive solitude are very nearly more than she can bear, and she cannot understand why Mama and Elinor both refuse to allow her to so much as stand on the stoop and take in a few breaths of fresh air, but they will not. Outside is absolutely forbidden to her and she cannot even reasonably argue with them, after frightening them so badly before._

_After only two days, she finds herself staring at her bedside table._

_At the drawer she has hidden it in, the book that was given to her without her consent._

_She should pick something else. Anything else. She should go downstairs and ask Elinor to reread to her one of the books they already own._

_She cannot bear to. After everything, Elinor is both her refuge and an unending, silent censure. Wholly unintentionally, she knows, but censure, nevertheless._

_She manages one more day without touching it, and then reprimands herself for her utter lack of self-discipline when she finally opens her drawer to retrieve the hidden volume and climbs into her bed with it, a single taper lit beside her to illuminate its pages and many woolen layers surrounding her to lend warmth to her nightgown._

_She cannot rid herself of the distinct feeling that she is touching, handling something that she should not be as she opens the cover and turns to the first page. She imagines thieves must feel something similar when they first admire their stolen treasures, despite the fact that the book was given to her freely._

_The story is...excellent. She does not realize, until she is several chapters into the tale, that she has been afraid since he first passed the novel to her of finding a love story within its pages; something she would have no doubt delighted in only months ago, but that she cannot bear the thought of now. Instead, she has been given the pleasure of reading a charming and rather fantastical tale that is neither overly romantic in nature, nor stuffy, insufferable drivel._

_It is almost exactly suited to her new tastes, and she wonders at his fortune in divining them, when she scarcely can herself._

_She finishes it in only two nights, and as she closes it at last, she wonders what on earth made him give her this story in particular. It is very handsomely bound, and though old, it has been well-kept. The spine is unbroken, the pages clearly read but hardly worn, and when she looks inside the front cover—_

_She stares at it for a very long time, the inscription that is written there. The one that has gone unnoticed by her until now in favor of the story printed on the following pages._

_To Christopher, it says, followed by a date that passed many, many years ago. Long before she was even born._

_She traces the loop of the script with her index finger, stunned for a moment by the little but profound revelation that he has not always been the Colonel she knows now, but that there was a time when he was young, and that this book was given to him once, too. She wonders who did it, the giving. Whose fine penmanship it is that she now traces in the dim, flickering light of her candle. She wonders if the date is a birthday or if he was simply the sort of young person who liked best to be reading books, and so was given them often._

_But above all, she thinks of the words themselves and feels something cold and uncomfortable settle itself in her belly, because in all this time, months and months, more than a year since coming to live at their terrible little cottage, she has never once thought to wonder after his name._

_~_

Luncheon is a stilted affair.

She can hear every scrape of her cutlery against her plate as though she has no more grace with a fork and knife than Margaret, and she is so very aware that the clock is already past noon and that she has been awake for not so much as an hour. She cannot remember the last time she slept so, nor can she remember the last time she ate a meal with such a mortified flush burning hotly on her face.

The Colonel says nothing about it at all. When she first made her way downstairs and found him waiting for her and ready to eat, he said only “Good afternoon,” and “You must be hungry,” simply showing her to his dining room and pulling a chair out for her close beside his own at the head of the table.

Uncertainty makes her clumsy with her chicken, and she winces as her knife makes a high-pitched screech against the china of her plate, far too loud in the ringing silence.

She clears her throat and against all of her good sense—she should surely be _grateful_ for the silence instead of longing to break it, should she not?—says “The weather looks very fine today.”

He looks up at her, and _oh, is it her imagination, or can she feel him wondering at her? And why should he not, after cold feet and and cringes last night, only to be followed by such late sleeping and awkward conversation today? What sort of wife must he think her?_

But he only says “Yes, the mist finally cleared this morning.”

Her blush returns with a crawling heat and she carefully—so delicately, she has no wish to make _more_ noise—lays her fork and knife on her plate and tucks her hands beneath the table, where he cannot see how they fidget.

“I am sorry, I cannot remember the last time I slept so late, I—”

_He is smiling again. Shaking his head at her as the corners of his mouth raise ever so slightly, and she never knows what to make of him when he does that._

“It was a long day and you were tired,” he tells her in a quiet, considerate tone, as though there is nothing further to say on the subject, and she forces shoulders that she suddenly realizes have been terribly tense since the moment she first saw him after waking to relax.

_Yes, she was tired and that can be the end of it all._

She finishes her lunch and tells him, as she rises, that she is going outside to sit in his rose garden.

The weather, as they have already agreed, is very fine.

~

_She is half expecting it the next time Elinor knocks at her door and tells her that Colonel Brandon has arrived._

_The view out her window has been decidedly grey, of late, and he seems to have something of a fondness for visiting after it has rained. She arrives in their makeshift drawing room with his book clutched in her hands as a reminder to at least make an attempt at pleasantries, even if her manners are woefully out of use. She finds him gazing out of the very small window that looks out onto the road and marvels at his continued presence in their little cottage. He seems so very strange standing in the midst of their disorder and shambles._

_“Good afternoon.”_

_Two words, and at least they are clear and without the hoarseness that Elinor so fears or the trembling that she does. She has made a start._

_He turns toward her and she is all readiness to offer his book back to him and to make some attempt, however paltry, at swallowing her abominable pride and thanking him for thinking of her, but then he is making a little bow and greeting her and_ —

 _Motioning toward it, the book in her hands, and saying_ — _saying_ —

_Saying “I trust Miss Margaret has been finding her French lessons enjoyable.”_

_She is taken aback. Very nearly corrects him sharply because she knows very well that he never intended the book for Margaret, but blessedly thinks better of it before she can speak the words._

_Because his expression...is as unassuming as any she has ever seen, containing no hint of mockery, whatsoever. She can scarcely force herself to consider it, and yet cannot deny the very real and increasingly likely possibility that he is_ —

_Attempting to spare her pride._

_It is almost more humiliating than being forced to acknowledge the truth about the book she holds in her hands, the realization that she behaved so badly the first time he visited that he now seeks to coddle her with an undeniably well-intentioned pretense._

_“Yes, she...she has.”_

_There is the tremor she managed to avoid just a moment ago. It has crept back into her voice and she is all but certain that she will not be able to banish it now._

_He nods._

_“She found the book useful, then?”_

_“Yes,” and her voice is no more than a whisper as she says it, because from behind the hat he holds in his hands he has drawn out another book, and every sensible thought in her head has instantly flown away as she struggles to understand. To reason with herself and think of a sensible purpose he could have in taking it upon himself to visit a decidedly unpleasant girl every few days for no apparent reason other than to provide her with the luxury of fresh reading material._

_She thinks she must be staring at him in a most unsuitable way as he offers her the new book and tells her he hopes Margaret will enjoy his second offering as much as the first. She can do nothing in reply but pass the book she herself has been holding to him in return as she numbly accepts the new one without even bothering to read its title._

_She wonders if his name will be written on the inside of this one’s cover too._

_She can think of nothing to mention, no conversation to give him, though she had determined to try to say at least something a little charming to him the moment Elinor told her he had arrived, and so she does just what she swore, only months ago, never to do. She talks of the weather and asks after the state of the roads, and after he has answered her and taken his leave to continue on his way, she can only carry her new novel, again in French, up the stairs to her room and wonder, bewildered, after the supposedly prodigiously large library kept by the Colonel at Delaford._

_If it is even half as extensive as Sir John has always claimed, it could be quite some time before she finds herself bored and without anything to divert herself with again._

_~_

His roses are, in fact, very beautiful.

It should hardly come as a surprise to her, she reasons. She has received enough bouquets of them in the past months, after all, but to see them planted in their beds along the edges of his house, with no limit to the time available to her for examining them, is another thing entirely.

She passes the afternoon out there, breathing in the scent of the flowers and feeling the sun on her face. She cannot tell, precisely, if she does so because she is longing for the freshness of time spent out of doors, or if she is simply nervous of being inside and available for conversation and keeping company.

She supposes she should be speaking to the housekeeper, or examining the kitchen, or some other industrious domestic pursuit, but she finds that she cannot bring herself to do it. Half the day has passed without her authority reigning over the Colonel’s home. Years and years, in fact, have passed at Delaford with no one’s oversight but the Colonel’s and God’s. His estate will hardly fall to shambles as a result of her temporary, if selfish, neglect.

As a matter of fact, she learns more about Delaford than she intends to in the hours spent sitting in solitude on his garden bench. She learns that the servants are industrious, always going to and fro. She learns that the grounds are immaculately kept, and that the view from the front of the house is an exceptionally lovely one.

And she learns that the master of the estate is fond of walking those grounds with his hounds close at his heels.

That evening she learns that dinners at Delaford are quiet affairs, unburdened by excessive pretension, and she thinks that it must only be her presence that makes the near-silence feel so very thick and oppressive.

That night she learns that her husband has no intention of keeping a separate set of rooms.

~

_The books continue to arrive, delivered to her by the Colonel personally, and by the time she has made her way through the better part of three novels and a biography she learns to smile politely at him when he arrives. She has even mastered the trick of making conversation by pointing out the progress of Elinor’s vegetable garden to him from the view of it she has at the drawing room window and telling him hopelessly that she thinks her mother will never allow her to venture out of doors again._

_She has resigned herself, at long last, to his persistent kindness. She should, perhaps, be too proud for it; too proud to accept his pity with so little struggle, but she sees little point in it when he seems so very determined to be her...her friend, she supposes, even if it pains her more than a little to let him._

_She does not like the sensation of owing that comes with the suspicion that Colonel Brandon is still, all these months later, carrying her through the rain. She wonders if it would have felt like this before_ — _so unearned and awkward to accept_ — _if she had been aware of it at all, or indeed able to remember it, the first time._

_He is nothing, however, if not consistently thoughtful, and despite feeling a little stab of betrayal at the shadow of almost-contentment that slowly settles over her as they establish an uneasy routine of exchanging books, one recently read for one yet to be opened, every few days, she is grateful to him for providing a little distraction from the confines of life as a near-invalid in her own home._

_The rain eventually leaves Devonshire, and for a good long while they are the happy recipients of sun-filled days of lovely warmth that leave her filled with such a fierce longing for one of her old walks that she scarcely knows what to do with herself and finds her days indoors filled with nothing but a dreadful melancholy that she cannot rid herself of, no matter how hard she tries._

_She is sitting at the little table in the front room of the cottage, trying in the face of every adversity Margaret can plague her with to impress upon her younger sister the importance of learning French, when he calls again, Colonel Brandon with his customary book in hand._

_“Miss Marianne, Captain Margaret,” he greets them, and she is thankful, suddenly, that he has caught them with French copybooks spread open before them. He has yet to deliver anything written in English to her, and she thinks it might be a good thing_ — _a relieving thing_ — _for him to see that she was in earnest when she first claimed to be teaching Margaret._

 _“Good afternoon, Colonel. I have your book upstairs, if you’ll just excuse me_ _for a moment. We did not expect to see you today.”_

_With such fine weather having set in for so many days together, she has fully expected him to be afield somewhere and that she would have a long wait between his current offering to her and his arrival with yet another._

_She fetches his book from its place at her bedside and returns to exchange with him, but he simply takes it and does not offer her the book he has brought with him. She is, perhaps, more than necessarily short with him during the conversation that ensues, in her confusion at his refusal to offer her the prettily bound volume he can have brought with him for no other purpose than to lend to her. Why else should a gentleman ride about the countryside with a book in his possession, after all?_

_Mama and Elinor have noticed his arrival now and they all make their way into the drawing room, which is a much more accommodating size for all five of them, to take tea while Marianne puzzles over the Colonel and his departure from the not-quite-comfortable routine they have just barely established at his own insistence._

_Margaret does the asking for her, and Marianne blushes when her sister so bluntly asks after the book the Colonel has brought. She has not, after all, fully explained their strange little ritual to her family. They would surely forbid her from doing anything so strenuous as reading a novel with her own eyes, and she is too fond of the very little bit of freedom her own supply of reading material has allowed her to give her mother any reason to put a stop to it._

_But instead of revealing the small secret she has kept from her family, he instead smiles agreeably at Mama and says “I was riding this way and wondered if Miss Marianne might be in need of some diversion. I've brought a book of sonnets to read out_ — _”_

 _She makes a terribly loud noise when she startles so badly at his words that she accidentally causes her saucer to collide with her cup and very nearly spills her tea. It is frightening, how swiftly and strongly the anger rises in her. No, no he will not be reading sonnets out to her, no matter that he is Colonel Brandon and deserves nothing but her highest praise and most grateful smiles. Allowing him to lend books to her because there is no polite way for her to stop it and because she is, if only secretly, appreciative of the novelty of reading something completely unknown to her is one thing, but calling on them at their little cottage for the sole intention of forcing her to listen while he reads poetry to her is_ —

_Quite another. She has no desire to ever listen to poetry again. In fact, she thinks she will scream if she does, and then the entire county will think her well and truly mad. All of this occurs to her in the scant breath he takes between words, and she is just readying to make her displeasure known in the clearest of terms, regardless of politeness, or the fact that Elinor will surely lecture her later, when he finishes._

_“_ — _and with the weather being so fine, I thought that she might like to hear them outside.”_

_She very nearly embarrasses them all and laughs. It truly is a close thing, in the end, because Mama will never allow it and it is his own fault that her mother will do the refusing for her and send him amiably on his way. She has told him herself during their stilted little conversations in this very room that she is kept very nearly under lock and key._

_Except Mama...does not refuse him. She fusses a little, to be sure, with a worried frown forming on her brow, but when it is decided that a chair may be found for Marianne to recline in as the Colonel reads to her, she relents with hardly any objection at all, and Marianne is stunned._

_Out of doors? Mama will let her out of doors at long last, and all that was required to earn the privilege of longed-for fresh air and sunlight was the Colonel’s request?_

_The Colonel. She looks at him and the book he has brought to read out to her and remembers telling him only a week ago how fervently she longed for just an hour out of doors. Dumbfounded, she wonders at what he means by it, supplying her with novels when she complains that she has run out of her own and providing her with the means of freedom when she laments at having become a captive._

_Is she so very pitiful as all that?_

_He meets her gaze and she has the uncomfortable feeling that he knows exactly where her thoughts have flown since he first revealed that he has brought her poetry today, instead of prose, and the question is clearly hers to answer and hers alone. He can hardly force her to sit still for him, she knows. He has come offering her air, and sunlight, and and a chance to breathe, everything that has been so frustratingly beyond her grasp for weeks and weeks, and the price she must pay for it_ — _to her mother, if not to him_ — _is an hour of listening while he reads to her from a book of sonnets._

_She feels defeat, dread, and anticipation seep into her somehow all at once, because he is being kind again, in his own way. She can tell by the way he has phrased it all in the gentlest of terms, so easy to decline, should she wish to, and it is that very kindness that makes it quite impossible for her to refuse him now. Even she cannot be that selfishly inclined._

_So a chair is brought into the yard and she takes her first steps out of doors_ — _holding tight to Colonel Brandon’s arm at Mama’s worried insistence_ — _in more time than she cares to count._

_The sun on her face feels positively ravishing, the slight breeze through her hair is as lovely as a cool stream of water on an unbearably hot day, and the view, oh, she could weep to see the lovely trees without a pane of glass to shield her eyes._

_The hour is...not quite fast, but neither is it unbearably slow. Mercifully, he has not brought Shakespeare. She would like to believe that she would have kept her composure if he had, but she cannot be sure. He reads Spenser to her, and try as she might to ignore the words and simply soak in the blessed moment of relief from the monotony of the cottage that has been so unexpectedly bestowed upon her, she cannot help but notice, to her great astonishment, that he is quite possibly the finest reader she has ever heard. He has an excellent voice for it and almost seems to recite each poem, he reads them with such nuance and depth of feeling._

_She thinks this all might have been easier if he were a little less gifted with such a wholly unexpected talent. A mediocre reader can be ignored easily enough. A truly outstanding reader_ — _and the Colonel is undeniably of the latter sort_ — _commands the attention of their audience every time without fail, and her efforts to ignore his words are met with varying amounts of success throughout the hour she spends delighting in the simple pleasure of reclining on the lawn with the Colonel’s voice as the very key to her newfound freedom._

_Eventually their time has passed and Mama calls her to return to the house. She is not certain whether she should thank him or not as he walks her to the cottage door. He has subjected her to poetry, which she can say with complete honesty that she could happily have gone the rest of her life without hearing even one more line of, and yet she has spent the past hour in the shining warmth of the sun, an impressive feat of escape from Mama that she has not been able to manage herself in many, many weeks._

_She settles for an attempt at a smile and a pleasant farewell, uncertain if she quite manages it, and submits herself to her mother’s fretful examination of her person to make certain that the exertion of walking to and from a perfectly comfortable chair has done her no lasting harm. All the while she thinks that even if it was just once and only for an hour, she cannot truly claim to be, all in all, wholly displeased to have suffered an hour of the Colonel’s reading voice in exchange for a moment’s release from the strange penance she finds herself performing anew each day._

_~_

She is a little more prepared, if not, admittedly, easier about facing him the second night.

The room is much the same, a warm fire in the grate and too large to be anything approaching truly comfortable to her, yet seeming immediately too solitary and enclosed the moment he enters.

She has already donned a fresh, plain nightdress and brushed her hair, and now sits curled up in a chair before the fire to wait for him instead of standing half-frozen before the mirror. She half-heartedly begins to rise as he closes the door softly behind him, but he simply waves her attempt away and goes to stand before the fire, casting a very long shadow on the floor behind him.

“Were the roses to your satisfaction?” he asks, and though she examines his voice carefully for any hint of bitterness or rebuke for keeping to herself for so much of the day, she finds none.

“They are lovely,” she tells him, and the words are sincere ones. He cares for the bushes himself, she knows, and he possesses an undeniable gift for it.

He takes his seat in the chair beside hers and they sit for a good long while, watching the flames rise and fall. She can only be thankful to have an excuse to avoid his gaze. He tells her of the new bushes he planted in the spring and of what he will do to shelter the plants when the fine September days Devonshire has been enjoying of late finally turn into brisk, autumn ones. Perhaps it is the steady warmth of the fire, or the lull of being spoken softly to, or simply the new and almost overwhelming surroundings she finds herself in, but she very nearly nods off just as he is explaining which types of roses can and cannot be successfully grown in England.

She fights back a wave of mortification—again and again, it seems, these nights will be a trial—when he is silent for a long stretch of time and she realizes that she has all but dozed off and entirely missed the asking of a question that he is now waiting for her to answer.

She must have jerked a little at the realization, because he smiles at her before she can so much as apologize and says “Forgive me for troubling you with the details.”

“You haven’t, I just—”

But his smile has turned very faintly reproving at her denial, and she knows there is no use in pretending that she is not altogether more tired than she has any right to be after sleeping for so long this morning, and that she has not been half-listening to him for more than a few minutes.

She does not, after all, have his gift for coaxing flowers to bloom, and it seems that he finds fault with her attempt to feign interest in spite of her exhaustion, rather than with her failure to possess any in the first place.

He rises and begins to put the candles out, and she knows what is coming and remains in her chair for as long as possible before she hears him finish with his round about the room and come to a stop beside the bed.

_Tonight? She wonders with no small amount of apprehension._

But she goes to stand next to him regardless, feeling once again small and... _unseemly_ as he draws back the covers for her and she climbs in to reclaim her pillow.

Instead of lying down, she sits and chafes at her feet. It will not do to repeat the wretchedly uncomfortable performance of last night and either shock him with frozen toes, or have him think that she is terrified enough of him to send her skittering the entire length of the bed away. He sits too and waits without comment for her to finish, extinguishing the final candle only once she has settled herself and lain down to sleep, her hands folded against her stomach and the shortness of her breaths the only betrayer of her nervousness.

_He has already been kind enough to give her a night’s reprieve._

She is expecting the shift of the mattress when he rolls toward her. Is expecting the shadow of him leaning over her. She stills herself and waits, insisting within the confines of her own mind that she will be willingness itself, despite the quiet panic steadily rising in her.

And then he shifts again, shifts up and truly does make her panic when he kisses not her lips or some other place she might expect, but her brow again, as soft as anything she has ever felt and slightly lingering.

 _She cannot bear it._ Not before and certainly not now, because if she has proven herself consistent at anything, it is that she has never been, and as far as she can tell never will be, the sort of woman Colonel Brandon should have for a wife. He has never been anything but good to her; _sh_ _e_ is the unkind one, the rude one, the one who feels hollow on the inside more than anything else, and the kisses he sees fit to lay on her brow only serve to remind her of just how unclean she still feels, because they seem so very _holy._

So very loving, while she feels shriveled up and hardened, capable of anything but love.

She stays still for him and does not make a sound because she has promised herself that she will be good for him whenever it is at all possible. Because he has been married to her for an entire day and has asked nothing of her except that she dine with him and sleep unmolested in his bed.

He says it again, just like the night before _“Goodnight, Marianne,”_ and she fights to contain the gasp that wants so badly to escape from her aching chest.

 _Breathe,_ she tells herself. _Breathe, and do it quietly._

Tonight, at least, when she rolls over to sleep, though the pain of it all—the candlelight, and the bed that he clearly intends only for sleep, and the feel of his lips on her brow—is even worse than it was the night before, the tears do not come.

She is too tired even to weep.

~

_She thinks he must have forgotten something when he calls the very next day after their little outing for poetry on the lawn._

_But he has not. He has simply returned with the same book, a ribbon marking the place where they left off, and the promise of yet another hour spent in the sun if she can only bear to listen as he reads her verse once more._

_So she sits and listens to the wind, and the geese, and anything but the words he takes from the page and so deftly breathes life into, and she thinks that if she must listen to poetry, at least he reads it well._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> So, my advice is to not get used to the daily updates. For some reason I seem to be churning these chapters out like they're going out of style, but that probably won't last long. Enjoy it while it lasts! Thank you for all the lovely comments, I so appreciate all of the feedback and the people who have shared their opinions with me. Please, always feel free to tell me what you think, whether positive or negative, as long as it's kind. I love to hear your thoughts.
> 
> Love, 
> 
> -Penny
> 
> Also: Please note that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been added to the tags. In my opinion it is minor, but please be aware.

The days that follow are long ones for Marianne.

The Colonel must rise very early, because she does not sleep particularly late after that first day, yet he is always gone from the bed by the time she wakes and begins a new day. He keeps to himself most days, and though she sees him without fail at luncheon and dinner, he seems to pass the rest of his time largely either out of doors, or retreated into his study, where she does not care to follow him. For her own part, she occupies herself by acquainting herself with her lovely new home.

Delaford has many fine drawing rooms, elegantly furnished and immaculately kept. The housekeeper must truly be a force to behold, Marianne thinks, because it can be no small feat to keep such a house so very fine and presentable as she finds it in those early days.

The library, in particular, is a source of awe and astonishment to her. It is larger, even, than the truly excellent library once boasted by Norland, now surely decimated by Fanny. Bookshelves span the entire length of the walls, and of course, the handsomest instrument she has ever seen is propped open and ready for use. She cannot help her curiosity at the sight of the many spines of books resting on the shelves, because though she has seen it before, the extensive collection kept by the Colonel, she has not allowed herself to truly examine them, and by extension, his tastes.

She quickly realizes that she will be able to discern very little of his preferences in reading material by the shelves of his library, however, because the sheer size and volume of the collection makes it an impossibility. There are histories, and biographies, and philosophical treatises, and of course, poetry, and every other kind of book she could ever hope to find, all in a variety of languages which makes her wonder if he can even read them all. She certainly cannot. Each title is organized alphabetically by author, and she thinks she could read an entire book every day for a year and not find herself much more than a little way through the contents of the famous Delaford library.

She chooses a book for herself, a history that she thinks will be very good for her mind, at least, if a little dry, and goes off in search of a quiet room—or at least, a smaller one. All of Delaford is quiet, but she cannot bear to read in such a high-ceilinged room, and with his Broadwood grand seemingly staring at her from the very middle of it—where she can hide away and remind herself of the finer details of the Norman Conquest.

She reads for nearly the entire rest of the day.

~

_He returns again and again._

_When the damp of the spring begins to lie heavy around Barton Cottage every night, Mama takes to bundling Marianne off to bed in whole heaps of blankets and woolen things, far too many to be comfortable, but Marianne dares not argue._

_She has no right to, she supposes. Not after everything._

_She is sorely tempted to protest, however, when the bundling begins to follow her throughout the day, Mama herding her about the house with shawls and thick stockings in her arms, insisting that she be covered by layer upon layer of warmth every minute of the day._

_Marianne rapidly develops an intense appreciation for the Colonel’s now-daily visits, if, admittedly, not a renewed taste for poetry, as they allow her a moment’s respite from the constant worrying and coddling. The Colonel, it seems, can do no wrong in Mama’s eyes. He has only to remark on the fineness of the weather and Mama is all too eager to allow her outside with only as much fuss as is required to wrap her in a warm shawl. They spend a good deal of time on Spenser, then on Burns, then Marlowe, then Spenser again, and though she must fight fiercely against the memories that are resurrected in her as she listens to the verses as he reads them out to her, she cannot imagine that she would trade her precious hours of escape for anything in the world._

_He is faithful to never miss a single day, and she puzzles over it but is grateful for the time spent out of doors. He even persuades Mama to allow her to take a longed-for stroll down the hill to the road and back, and though she is more unsteady on her feat than she ever imagined she could be, gripping the Colonel’s steady arm for support all the way, and her breaths are coming in short, exerted huffs by the time they return to the cottage and Mama exclaims at the color in her cheeks, she can only smile as she has not had cause to in many months._

_If she is to be forced into a friendship with anyone, she thinks she must be fortunate that Colonel Brandon seems to have been chosen as her minder. She still hesitates at his visits, because however undeserving she knows herself to be, he is constancy itself, always calling at their little cottage at the same time every afternoon._

_If Marianne is more than a little oblivious, Elinor, at least, notices with a smile that her sister has formed a daily habit of sitting by the drawing room window, gazing wistfully out of it from very nearly the moment they finish their midday meal, and that her eyes hardly stray from the road till the hoofbeats of Colonel Brandon’s horse can be heard from her place there._

_~_

She passes several days curled up in a chair that is rather more comfortable than it looks on first inspection, reading.

She has little enough to complain of in her life since coming to live at Delaford. She is well-fed and kept in comfort, no part of the house barred from her, and if struggling for conversation pieces over two meals a day and sharing a bed with someone who does not have Elinor’s familiar scent is a little odd, she certainly cannot claim it a trial.

The only _truly_ trying part of all of it, though she says not a word about it and intends never to do so, is the kiss he so faithfully lays to her brow each and every night without fail. It _grates_ on her, the selfish, misshapen, dirty feeling his tenderness summons in her, and her inability to bear such a harmless, gentle token of affection from her husband, in turn, only serves to make her feel all the uglier.

She keeps her silence though, bearing it because she knows she cannot reasonably do anything else, and also because she cannot quite bring herself to. She cannot bear his little display, but nor can she bear to be cruel enough to turn him away.

The little drawing room she has chosen as her daily refuge is far removed from the main part of the house, comfortably furnished but too small for entertaining visitors. Three or four days of reading with the sun streaming through the window as her light pass before he happens upon her there.

He has such a quiet way of it, opening doors, that it is a moment before she realizes she is no longer alone. Then he is there, making soft footfalls across the span of the room, saying _“Good afternoon”_ in that quiet voice of his, and she wonders if she should stop, if he wants her for some hitherto unrevealed duty she has yet to perform as his wife, but he seems content to do nothing more than examine the view out the window, carefully arranging himself so that he does not block her light.

He stays only a few minutes but the next day, once she has chosen a new and rather ambitious book to apply herself to and sought out her favorite chair, there is a warm fire lit in the modest little grate, though her presence in the out-of-the-way little room has gone entirely unnoticed by the servants until now.

He returns again.

He is a daily, near-silent intruder on her self-imposed solitude, arriving, murmuring a greeting, examining the window or one of the few portraits hanging from the papered walls, and then leaving her once more with hardly any fuss. She watches, bemused, as he performs his ritual for nearly an entire week, and she wonders if he wants something. If he is offended that she has secluded herself away and is simply too polite to say anything about it, but he never gives any hint that he is bothered by either her location or occupation.

Then one day he arrives with a book of his own and sits reading in the chair opposite her for the better part of an entire hour.

She makes nearly no progress in her own book until he leaves.

~

_She had hoped that once she learned to climb the stairs on painfully unsteady legs, the physical weakness left in her by the fever would no longer restrict her._

_When the Colonel at last persuades Mama to allow her to regularly stroll slowly with him about the lawn, down to the road or around Elinor’s hopeful little vegetable garden, she realizes that her recovery has perhaps only just begun._

_The shortness of breath has not yet left her, and her steps are humiliatingly slow as they make their way around the circumference of the cottage. The unevenness of the ground is surely no help to her either. She is so terribly unsteady on her feet that she takes his arm even without Mama’s insistence. He holds her steady as she huffs and puffs her way across the modest little yard that the cottage boasts, feeling utterly ridiculous all the while, but persisting nevertheless. The sooner she can make the walk successfully on the Colonel’s arm, the sooner she will be able to accomplish it on her own._

_The truly impressive amount of time required for her to stroll even the limited space afforded by the grounds around the cottage leaves her with plenty of time to practice conversing politely after so much time spent keeping to herself in the aftermath of her and Elinor’s return from London. They are peculiar things, the conversations that pass between her and the Colonel as she slowly and painstakingly regains her strength. The vegetables Elinor tends to so faithfully hardly grow fast enough to provide a diversion for them every day. Margaret, on occasion, plays in the yard and affords them some distraction, but Marianne is well aware that they have thoroughly exhausted most of the usual topics of conversation—the weather and the state of the roads—and finding herself at a loss for any other agreeable thing to discuss, she takes to inquiring after the health of the Colonel’s horse. She thinks the question takes him aback the first time she asks it, but she would much rather discuss the horse’s health than her own. It has been so long since she has been able to think of anything particularly witty to say, and she is almost proud to see the subtle look of amusement cross his face as he answers her most earnestly. The horse becomes a regular topic of conversation during their walks, in addition to Marianne’s slowly but steadily improving needlework and Margaret’s longing for a treehouse like the one Father built for her at Norland._

_Most days he still reads to her after they have finished with their makeshift stroll._

_Usually he brings a chair from the cottage into the yard and situates her in it, but on days when the weather makes time spent out of doors an impossibility he simply takes up a place in the drawing room. She is not altogether comfortable sitting opposite him beside their pokey little fireplace. She cannot help but feel wary at his presence there, because their drawing room seems far too small for the Colonel and the exceptionally upright figure he cuts. But he simply folds himself into it and reads to Marianne and whoever else chooses to listen without a single complaint._

_~_

He is not watching her.

She has glanced up at him to confirm it more than once, and each time she does she finds his gaze fixed unwaveringly on the book he holds open in his lap.

It is the second time he has joined her in her habit of reading the day away, and though she keeps waiting for him to attempt a conversation, or to ask her why she has chosen this, of all rooms, to settle herself in, or to insist that she meet with his housekeeper and begin what she imagines to be the extremely daunting task of managing the goings on of his very fine house, he has yet to do any of these things.

He simply turns another page, and she feels the beginnings of curiosity stirring within her.

_What book has he chosen? What does Colonel Brandon read of an afternoon, in the company of his wife and nobody else, tucked away where no one can see them?_

Her curiosity is irresistibly distracting and she nearly gives up on her book for the duration of his stay with her. She does not read even two pages together in the entire hour that he spends seated across from her. 

~

_There eventually comes an exceptionally fine stretch of days, and when he calls on them he brings no book to read out of. Instead he is accompanied by a hired man and several pieces of sturdy wood, and sets about building the very treehouse she has told him Margaret has been missing from Norland. With the help of both the hired man and Thomas the entire project lasts three days. When it is finished Margaret loses all composure and runs about the yard so enthusiastically that Marianne, Elinor, and Mama all scold her, but the Colonel just smiles._

_She wonders when they will finally reach it, whatever limit exists on Colonel Brandon’s generosity to the Dashwood family. She will have to better guard her words in future, as it seems she need only mention their want for something in passing for him to provide it in abundance. This treehouse he has built...it gives her pause._

_She thinks it a very good thing that she is the one whose health has required his minding of late, and not the careless Margaret who would surely have the poor Colonel travelling the length of the Orient to bring her the most unsuitable and exotic gifts if she would only sit still long enough to confide her wants to him._

~

The third day he joins her, she finally asks him.

“What are you reading?”

He leaves off his reading easily enough and shows her the author’s name inscribed on the spine of his book.

Hobbes.

She never took him for a philosopher, but she supposes she has assumed a great many things of him that have been proven untrue over the course of their acquaintance. To be wrong about him in one more respect should not now come as any sort of shock.

“And what have you found?” he asks her, so she shows him her own _History of Architecture in France._

She can tell by his raised eyebrow and the droll tone in his voice when he says “How very fascinating” that he is laughing at her, or at the very least trying not to. For a careless moment she very nearly says _at least it is not poetry,_ before she manages to restrain herself. Saying so would require revealing to him that she has spent a significant stretch of months resenting him, at least in part, for his choice of reading materials with which he has so generously diverted her, even as she has shamelessly used him as an escape from her lot in life, and though she suspects he knows it already and did even at the time, she does not care to declare it to him outright.

So she simply shakes her head at him and asks him a question about the finer points of Hobbes.

He explains it all rather well, as she knew he would. They take tea together that afternoon, and it is... _easier,_ if not completely familiar or unstilted

She finds that she does not mind so very much the distraction from her study of architecture, which is, after all, not so fascinating as one might imagine.

~

_She finally convinces Mama to allow her to go outside on her own._

_There are conditions, of course. She must not walk any great distance or do anything that might overly exert herself. Nevertheless, she is allowed out of doors and does not snub her nose at the privilege of it._

_It is for that reason that when Colonel Brandon calls on the Dashwood family that afternoon, he finds her on her knees tearing weeds out of the rather overrun flower bed that lines the cottage’s front, her hands wrist-deep in mud and her hair in a perfect state of disarray._

_“Miss Marianne?”_

_She startles at the sound of his voice. He has a way of walking that is nearly silent at times, and she has been so long at the weeds that she has quite lost track of the time and forgotten to look for his usual arrival. She finds herself peering up at him from the ground instead and wonders if she should go inside to clean herself up for him, or if she should continue on as she is and leave him to follow suit._

_She settles on continuing with the weeds, and if she is surprised when he lowers himself to the ground beside her without comment, she does not show it._

_“Good afternoon, Colonel. How is your horse today?”_

_The question is almost a tradition by now, as is his droll reply._

_“A little low in spirits, but I suspect it to be nothing beyond the power of a bucket of oats to fix.”_

_Once in a while it happens like this, easily and without much effort at all. Many times they are a little strained, his visits, even after so many days of them in a row, but today she has weeds to pull and he sits beside her and watches Margaret play a silly game all by herself in the treehouse he has built for her._

_“I think we have all been a little low in spirits of late, Colonel. Perhaps you have a bucket of oats that can cure all of us?”_

_She doubts very much that he has anything of the sort, of course, but it is only a bit of whimsy. She has spoken to so few people in the past months, the Colonel has been almost the sole recipient of her fledgling attempts to regain whatever wit she used to possess. At least she can be reasonably certain that he will not tease her for whatever nonsense she says to him._

_And he does not. He only says “You seem to be managing quite well. See, you have found a patch of sun.”_

_She has, at that. The weather is far too fine for this early in the spring. If it were not, Mama would never have allowed her out of doors on her own, regardless of the fact that her strength has been returning by leaps and bounds of late, largely as a result, she thinks, of the gradually increasing length of her strolls about the lawn with the Colonel._

_“Yes, I have finally convinced Mama that I am perfectly capable of venturing a few steps, at least, out of doors without the use of your arm to steady me. Although perhaps that is only because she wants these beds ready for her daffodils in a few weeks’ time.”_

_“Daffodils?” he asks, raising an inquiring eyebrow._

_“Yes, daffodils. Bluebells, too. We used to grow them at Norland, but we have yet to try them here. Do you know anything about caring for them in this climate?”_

_She cannot tell what she has said to bring the little smile that he wears to his face, but he shakes his head at her and says only “I have never tried my hand at daffodils. I can tell you all about caring for roses, though, if that is of any interest. I grow them at Delaford.”_

_“Yes, I know.”_

_She says it without thinking and before she can stop herself. She does, indeed, know that he grows roses at Delaford, because he has given her a bouquet of them already, a very long time ago when she was flushed all over and confined to her couch with a sprained ankle. But of course, that was before—_

_Before, or perhaps at the very beginning of._

_She is half-surprised at herself for remembering, she has not thought of it in such a long time. Now she has been foolish enough to speak of it to him, and whether he is remembering the same as she is or not, every remotely clever thing to say has just fled her mind in embarrassment and no small amount of shame._

_He must have thought her such a very silly little girl then, and though she possessed no care at all for his opinion of her at the time, she finds herself very sorry for having reminded him of something that might lower it now._

_He seems wholly unbothered by her foolish mistake though, only asking if she would like help with her weeding or if she would prefer that he read to her instead._

_She feels a little odd saying so, but she tells him he can do the bed next to her own, and they spend half an hour in relatively companionable silence as they work._

_She thinks that if things were different, if she was not caught up in an unshifting melancholy and trying desperately to make up for an unfortunate slip of the tongue, she might even giggle at it—Colonel Brandon on his hands and knees tending the family Dashwood’s flower beds._

_Imagine that._

_~_

It becomes a regular passtime between them, reading together.

She supposes the silence had to break at some point—is grateful that it has, in fact—and books have long been a reliable source of conversation for them. They discuss them, sometimes, and eventually afternoon reading becomes evening reading instead, usually undertaken immediately after dinner, before a large fire in Delaford’s true drawing room and with the Colonel’s three hounds drowsing on the carpet at their feet.

The weather turns brisk not even three weeks after their wedding, and the annual cycle of autumn storms begins.

She can hear one building outside even now as she feels the warmth of the fire glowing on her face, and the sound of it makes her shiver as though the rising wind is blowing through the very walls of the house.

He must see her do it out of the corner of his eye because he looks up at her, and the combination of his gaze and the onslaught of rain that abruptly begins hammering against the windows proves too much of a distraction for her to continue reading. She closes her book with a sigh and goes to the window instead, seeing lightning, hearing thunder, and always _always_ the sound of rain.

She detests it. Gentle spring showers are one thing, but a true _downpour_ like—

The noise of it pools like dread in her belly, an almost visceral reaction that has her winding her arms about her middle and forcing herself to take deep breaths. She sees the frown on her face in the reflection that stares back at her from the darkened window, but she cannot help _that._

Not now, under the assault of the sound of the storm and...everything that accompanies it.

He has come to stand beside her, but he does not join her in watching the lightning. Instead he watches _her,_ she can see out of the corner of her eye, and his frown is one of concern rather than distaste.

“Are you cold?” he asks her, and there is a slight tinge of true worry in his tone. She can hear it.

“No, I—” Thunder sounds again, so close that it seems to be right above her, and she flinches. “I am not fond of storms, is all.”

He does not mean anything by it, she knows very well. She will remind herself of it later, once she has calmed and the pounding of the little drops against the glass is not causing her head to ache as though with a fever. He says the words almost absent-mindedly and not unkindly as he turns from her to do a job that rightly belongs to one of his servants and add a log to the fire, and her reaction to them is entirely irrational:

“I thought you liked the rain.”

If he had said it at almost _any_ other time, perhaps she would not have taken offense. If she stopped to consider for a moment that perhaps even Colonel Brandon could be capable, on occasion, of speaking without thinking, she most certainly would not have. As it is, he says them to her now, in this moment when the storm is an agony to her, and for a vicious moment she despises him for it.

“What on _earth_ would give you an idea like that?”

He stops and so does she because she _hears_ herself, the tone she has just used and the words she has just spoken, and it all sounds so angry when he has given her no just cause to be so. When it is as much the other way ‘round as it is possible to be.

But she cannot take it back.

Instead she excuses herself and readies for bed an entire hour earlier than usual.

She is already sitting in his bed when he at last joins her in his room. Her back is straight against the head of it and her legs are tucked beneath her, and the sound of the rain is no less abrasive to her here than it was downstairs. It has, in fact, increased in strength as the storm has steadily grown, and perhaps if she knew her own mind better she would call the spinning sensation the sound engulfs her in _panic,_ but she has not known herself for months and months, so she simply calls it terrible pain.

She searches his expression as he enters, but he does not look even so much as annoyed by her earlier outburst, only a little concerned to find her so far removed from her usual place in the chair by the fire; to find her so very out of sorts.

She wishes he would not. She wishes he would look angry, or offended, or even hurt. Wishes that he would have stern words for her because he, more than anyone else, has a perfect right to chastise her for being foolish about rain, of all things.

Instead, he merely makes his rounds about the room, blowing out the candles, and when he comes to the bed and makes to lift the covers she climbs beneath them, as she has every night since their wedding.

He is settling herself and her heart is beginning to pound. She knows what comes next just like she knows the steps of a countless number of dances. He has never once deviated from his course, in all the nights she has slept beside him.

_The last candle. He blows it out._

She does not want to be here. She does not want to sleep and thinks that she will never be able to. Not tonight. She does not want to be in this bed, beside him, and she certainly does not want to feel the shift in his weight that she knows perfectly well to expect.

But she does.

_She wants to be curled up somewhere he cannot see her struggle. At the cottage, perhaps, with Elinor warm against her back like she would have been before everything changed. Before the rain came and ruined it all._

_The rain, and everything else._

Instead she is here, and he is propping himself up on an elbow and will soon be leaning over her, and the rain is pounding against the window panes just as hard as ever, and she _cannot_ do it.

She thinks she will shatter if he so much as touches her, let alone lays another of his horribly gentle kisses to her. She feels as fragile as cracking glass.

He begins to lower himself to her brow and she gasps the words out with what feels like it may be her final, shivering breath.

_“Please, do not.”_

She can _hear_ him swallow as he abruptly changes course and withholds himself from her, and the feeling that instantly settles over her is dreadful, as though he has thumped her hard in the breastbone, though of course he has done nothing of the sort and never would.

The moment that stretches long and silent between them, him still above her, her utterly frozen beneath him, seems as though it will never end. 

_She cannot breathe._

She hears everything in the time it takes him to finally resettle himself beside her. The quiet rhythm of his breaths, the crackle of the fire in the grate, and the gentling of the storm outside, as though their utter silence has calmed it a little at long last.

She waits for them, the words that she knows should come, the final step in their strange little dance, and she wonders if he will say them after she has just…

_Just._

He waits a very long time. She thinks he must already be asleep when he finally speaks very, _very_ quietly into the dark of the night.

_“Goodnight, Marianne.”_

Never have any words been so terrible, she thinks, hearing the quiet note of strain in his voice, and the pain in her head is no longer for the rain, but for her own foolishness. Her own selfishness, because she has, indeed, been very selfish tonight.

Of all the things Colonel Brandon could ask of her as his wife, he has taken for himself only a nightly kiss on her brow and she has faulted him even for that. Her chest is heavy with the knowledge that she has been monstrously unreasonable just now, and that he has borne it without so much as a word.

She hardly sleeps that night, not because she is not exhausted, but because it seems that after nearly three weeks she has become accustomed to their little routine and can now think of little else but her deviation from it.

_Because she does not feel as though she has just barely escaped shattering, but that she has only hastened the progression of cracks that have long been forming within her._

His kisses make her feel unworthy, to be sure. Unclean, even, in the face of how very good he has always been to her. He should be kissing very nearly _anyone_ but her.

But the absence of them makes her feel more so, as though she is a foolish child who has willfully chosen to go to bed without being blessed.

~

_The day after the flower beds is a fine one and he brings another book of Spenser’s poems to read out to her on the lawn._

_It all seems so idyllic. Margaret is in her treehouse, the water birds are busying themselves in the little stream that runs by the cottage, and she—_

_Is a little lost in it all, because she can hardly ignore the verses he is reading when all the world seems as though it has become a poem, surrounding her. His fine reading voice is only the flourish of the very final line._

_He brings his reading to a perfect close, and in all the time he has spent reading to her, it is the first time that she has not quite enjoyed the poetry he has brought her, but has at least not cared to struggle against it either. Her mind has, in fact, been so very peaceful throughout the entire hour he has read to her that turning toward him at his silence feels almost as though she is waking from a dream._

_“Shall we continue tomorrow?”_

_As always, of course, because she has never once bid him come to distract her from her undeniable pensiveness, and yet he always has. Her friend. He is certainly that, because even if she does suspect there is at least a little pity in it, he has given her his friendship and not allowed her to refuse it. She cannot help but be grateful because Colonel Brandon is just the sort of person that she imagines everybody should have as a friend. He could choose to be kind to any number of fine people in Devonshire, yet he chooses to be friendly to her, and to Elinor, and to his Captain Margaret without fail._

_“No, for I must away.”_

_That catches her attention enough to jar her from the dreamlike quality of her surroundings. It has been weeks and weeks since Barton Cottage has gone even a single day without being graced by his presence. To hear that they will not be for a time is...unsettling, in the very least._

_“Away? Where?”_

_Perhaps it is a little foolish and self-centered of her, but he seems such a fixture in their family’s midst, she cannot imagine him anywhere else._

_“That, I cannot tell you. It is a secret.”_

_She hears the gentleness in his tone and knows it for the attempt to reassure that it truly is. He will not be gone forever. She does wonder at it, this sudden absence of his. He has so determinedly drawn her first out of her room, and now out of doors, it seems odd that he should leave now. But then she sees his expression, and it is a faraway thing. She thinks, for the first time in many weeks, of Delaford and the many responsibilities he must surely see to._

_She thinks of his Beth, who she has never once spoken to him of, and has never again mentioned to Elinor since her sister told her his full tale. She wonders if this absence of his is so that he may see her, his ward, and do the same for his Beth that he has so diligently been doing for her._

_Provide a distraction from...the aftermath of it all. He has proven himself very capable at it, after all, and the thought of him doing so, while not a happy one, is not an unpleasant one either._

_She wonders what she will do in his absence. She has, however unconsciously, ordered her days around him. Now she will not be able to expect his company in the afternoons, and she finds that she will miss it a little._

_She will miss him._

_“You will not stay away long?”_

_When he smiles at her and shakes his head, she feels it grow on her face ever so gently and thinks she might gasp at it, were she not so afraid of startling it away._

_The beginnings of a truly genuine smile, not for anyone’s benefit but her own._

_She does, in fact, miss his company a great deal once he has gone. The days are a little longer and much duller, and walking on the lawn becomes an entirely futile exercise when there is no one to join her._

_Friend, she thinks again. He is her friend and she is most fortunate to have him. They all are—she, and Elinor, and Margaret, and Mama, and even Sir John and Mrs. Jennings. He carries with him a good deal of the charm to be found in the countryside surrounding Barton Park, and she thinks that one day, passing her life in this little cottage, with Mama, and Elinor, and Margaret for company, need not be so very gloomy if she has his visits, his company and a slowly increasing freedom to look forward to. She will be quite content spending her days learning to be useful in the company of her modest circle of friends, for they are good and true._

_Content, yes. She will learn, she thinks, to be content._

_Naught but a few days later the piano arrives and changes everything._


	4. Update

Hello everybody,

So this is a moment as a writer that doesn't happen to me very often, but when it does I think it's important to explain it. A while ago I wrote a very long version of Rest, Sad Eyes and then deleted it for personal reasons. Now, as I am rewriting it, I find that I've taken the story in a direction that I don't want it to go. In reviewing my plans for the story I've realized that there are fundamental flaws with the draft I have posted and that I need to rewrite my rewrite in order to successfully carry out my outline. I simply underestimated how difficult it would be to return to writing after such a long time away. I have a good start on the new version written that will soon be posted, but because I deleted the story so suddenly before, I'm posting this with a few days' notice so that people have a chance to make copies of what has already been published if for some reason you want to. I am NOT deleting this story now, but will be replacing the published material with new, heavily edited and changed material.

Thanks for your understanding and you can feel free to hit me up in the comments if you have any questions,

-Penny

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
> 
> On tumblr @ultravirola. I post fic updates, snippets of future chapters, the occasional meta, and am always happy to talk fandoms and pairings.


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